The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

EPILOGUE: A FAX FROM THE BEYOND

1997

At the convent of the mission of the Sacred Heart at Little No Horse, it was uncommon to receive donations too large to be set upon the revolving lazy Susan, which conducted boxes of macaroni, surplus apples and eggs, sweet corn in season, and canned corn in winter from the world outside to the world behind the walls. But this afternoon, having rung the buzzer and disappeared, a person or persons left within its original cardboard box an item of the latest office equipment.

Sister Adelphine had followed Father Jude Miller on his permanent move to Little No Horse. He had succeeded in persuading the bishop to allow him to conduct continued research on the question of his new project, the proposed blessedness and possible sainthood of Father Damien Modeste, recently perished. Now, Sister Adelphine answered the ring of the bells. She entered the room in a state of disturbance, for she had been canning passionately, attempting to set by a load of turnips that had appeared just that morning in many bread bags saved and reused by a thrifty farm family. So many turnips, all at once, indigestible. But if preserved, a welcome addition to many a forthcoming winter stew.

She’d dried her hands, given instructions to the sturdy novice who was helping her, and made her way to the anteroom, but was too late to thank the visitor or ask instructions for the use of the instrument, which she carried, with help from Father Jude when he arrived, into the room used for settling the account books, keeping track of donations, sending letters to the diocese, and paying bills.

The room was neat, and upon a wooden desk salvaged from the renovation of the local high school, there was sufficient room for the contraption. Father Jude lifted it from its carton and set it down gently. The fax machine was a small thing, rather pleasant and neat, made of off-white plastic, bearing lettered buttons and a small blank screen for a digital readout.

Jude, who was never good with such things, waved his hands at it humorously and then, in a slight fit of jovial zaniness, blessed it.

“Father Jude!” said Sister Adelphine.

The other sisters, many much older, some here since the beginning of time, crowded to the door after Jude Miller left and watched as Sister Adelphine, upon whose shoulders it now fell to deal with anything modern or mysterious, set the box aside and unreeled an attached telephone cord. The line reached just far enough, to the room’s only telephone jack. Sister Adelphine, with a small mischievous smile at the others, unplugged the instrument. She then inserted the clear plastic hinge to the fax machine. She connected the electrical cord to an outlet, too, and stood back with her arms folded. The machine hummed. A roll of slippery paper was already loaded into the drum. A tiny bit inched forward. The sisters voiced low approval among themselves. With an air of discovery, Sister Adelphine bent to retrieve something from the box, and then flourished a thin paper instruction booklet in their direction. It bore a black-and-white image of the fax machine on its cover, and numbered within the buttons to push, operations that could be performed, places that could be reached instantly, in print, from anywhere on earth.

Sister Adelphine paged through the booklet, moving her lips to aid comprehension. Her sisters glanced over her shoulder from time to time. Suddenly, a loud ring sounded. One sister moved to answer it, to lift the machine’s receiver, but Sister Adelphine raised her hand against the action. She had just been instructed within the booklet not to answer the phone, but to wait and allow the mechanism to translate for itself the incoming message. Craning forward to decipher the sudden letters that formed on the tiny screen below the buttons, Sister Adelphine read the words Incoming Message. She raised her brows in satisfaction, breathed out.

From somewhere within, the paper burped and skipped forward. The movement was so abrupt that one or two of the older nuns drew back, startled, but the others crowded forward to see what emerged. The message was typed on an old-fashioned ribbon typewriter and the ink was fuzzy in places, the strokes uneven, light and dark, but always legible. The seal in the left corner seemed both foreign and familiar. The women frowned, squinted, murmured among themselves. Then one of them in recognition gripped another’s arm, the next, the next, until they were all holding on to one another, trembling. With each line that groaned forward they sighed in consternation, fear, astonishment, for the letterhead gave it all away. Finally they came to the signature at the end of the implacable linked pages. It was written in a trembling, sweet, rounded hand that slanted cheerfully to the right. Some kind of hoax. As he entered the office, Father Jude’s eyes narrowed. The sisters cried out:

“The Holy Father! The Pope!”

My dear Father Damien,

In attempting to respond to a fragment of your letter, dated last year, delivered in tatters by the Italian Postal Service, and captioned Most Estimable Pontiff, I asked an assistant to bring me the body of correspondence to which you referred. To my distress, I am informed that the file of your letters and reports, which I am sure was so thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated over the years by my predecessors, has been inadvertently destroyed in an update and purge of the Vatican’s filing system.

All is not lost. Copies were sent back to your diocese, as I’ll explain.

I was sufficiently intrigued by the content of your one surviving letter that I feel compelled to write this personal note requesting your assistance in reassembling your life’s work. I am certain it would be of use to your colleagues. If you would be so kind as to consult your notes and produce copies, the Vatican Library would welcome your papers.

Father Damien, your love for the people in your care is a joyful statement of your faith. May you abide happily in their return of your affection, and pass your days now in pleasant contemplation of all the good you have accomplished.

The signature was distinct as could be, and the small community marveled over it. Carefully, the document was slipped into a clear plastic sleeve. Later on, the letter was framed and set within the entrance of the little cabin where Father Damien Modeste had once lived, a place the bishop directed, and Jude recommended, be kept as it was and even restored. The little historical shrine was cared for now by Mary Kashpaw, whose attention to detail included a careful stropping of the razor and shining of the copper shaving mug used by Father Damien.

Every day, she carefully dusted and arranged the papers on his desk, including words from a long ago sermon she’d saved, scrawled lightly and fading, What is the whole of our existence but the sound of an appalling love? She polished the wood, washed and changed his sheets and towels. Dusted his piano. Burnished the pedals. She spent as much time as she possibly could at these tasks, where she still felt the comfort of his presence. When her duties on the grounds and in the convent were finished, she often took refuge in his house and sat beside his bed. Her body rocked, though the chair was solid. Her lips moved but she made no sound. Sometimes she dozed off and followed Father Damien through the underbrush. Sometimes she dug her way down with a teaspoon toward her priest, her love, through the layers of the earth.